


i'll be home for next year darling

by bladeCleaner



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/F, Polyamory, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-21
Updated: 2014-04-21
Packaged: 2018-01-20 06:11:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1499636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bladeCleaner/pseuds/bladeCleaner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Will you, Aradia Megido, and you, Jade Harley, accompany me on a journey of which will encompass many a shitty motel, several mix tapes’ worth of bad radio, chips-greased fingers and one movie montage across the country-not to forget the aching backs we will have from naps in the back of a low-rent car?”</p><p>A summer road trip. Three girls. One destination.</p><p>Cue soundtrack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'll be home for next year darling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [astralDeveloper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/astralDeveloper/gifts).



> 'm sorry aD, I took your road trip suggestion and just ran away with it. Like Sonic-speed ran away with it. Hopefully you like this. Um. It's probably not what you expected. Also you don't have to click the links, they're all songs I was playing when I was writing this to get into the mood. I included them for entirely sentimental reasons.

It was so easy to drop everything. To just up and [_go_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b1PLMP_ql0).

Letting go has always been easy for them.

That morning, Rose had called, said to shove whatever they had in a duffel bag. Right after hanging up, Jade had barreled out the door fifteen minutes later up the street on her bicycle. She had a couple chargers, her phone, a few changes of clothes, toiletries, her wallet, her earphones, a neurophysics book, an atlas, a compass, a first aid kit, a roll of toilet paper, a flash light and a Swiss Army knife. She would have brought her gun, but she thought about toll checks. Besides, she could always get one later.

Aradia got her camping gear-archaeologists are always prepared-clothes, a charger, a bunch of ghost stories, a travel journal, her wallet, her earphones, her phone, mace, toothpaste, toothbrush, makeup.

Rose had even less. Standard clothes, charger, phone, earphones, wallet, toiletries(no makeup except for black lipstick) and a shitload of cash she’d swiped from her mom.

However, even she would rise from her drunken stupor like the Kraken if she’d swiped the brand new Hyundai. So she’d rented a decent one from the car company and had it parked in the driveway.

They got there in record time, Aradia bag still flapping on her back by the time Jade’s bicycle hit the curb.

They aren't prepared to lose her yet.

\--

Jade’s loading everything in the back while Aradia is trying to finagle the GPS in the driver’s seat. Rose is standing there for a minute trying to take everything in, her clothes packed, a letter on the dining room table inside. She’s looking at the headlights of the car, imagining them lighting up road after road. It’s going to be a long drive.

“So!” She says briskly; and in that moment she reminds Aradia of Terezi so much it aches. “Will you, Aradia Megido, and you, Jade Harley, accompany me on a journey which will encompass many a shitty motel, several mix tapes’ worth of bad radio, chips-greased fingers and one movie montage across the country-not to forget the aching backs we will have from naps in the back of a low-rent car?”

“Heck yes,” Jade bellows from somewhere behind her.

“I thought you’d never ask,” Aradia says, slinging her lab goggles around her neck.

They are seventeen and chasing after a girl. It’s a young adult novel synopsis, it’s an indie movie that wins Sundance Awards, it’s ancient history but none of their names are there.

Three teenagers and America stretching out before them, sprawling, seemingly limitless.

Aradia sets up the address, Jade clinks the trunk shut. They get into the car. There’s a stretch of silence.

Jade’s only got her permit. Rose and Aradia are barely minted as it is.

They floor it.

\--

“The pet store hired me,” Aradia says in the passenger seat. Rose is the first to drive. Jade’s got a schedule taped to the back of the driver’s seat written in green pen. Fifteen minutes in and she’s got her head against the glass, watching the suburbs roll by like a film she’s bored of already.

“You applied to the pet store?” Rose asks.

“I thought you wanted to be an archaeologist,” Jade pipes up from the back.

“Nepeta has connections.”

Rose looks over at her.

“And the museum won’t take my resume.”

“Congratulations,” Rose says. “You were hired just in time for this shitstorm to come rolling through Employment Town.”

“I think you need to stop hanging around your brother.”

“ _Rude_.”

\--

The next forty five minutes pass until Jade asks, “Where are we headed?”

Aradia and Rose exchange looks.

“New York.”

Jade leans in between the both of them and Aradia says, “Jade, put your seatbelt back on,” while Jade says, “What tracker did Sollux use, or was he just monitoring internet activity?”

Rose is slack-jawed for a few seconds before replying, “What makes you think Sollux was at all involved?”

“Rose, I’m not dumb. He’s the obvious choice in this scenario.”

“The scenario where we’re chasing a Pyrope on a cross-country jaunt?”

“Yep!”

“Internet activity, and for another thing, shouldn’t that atlas be in possession of the person next to the driver?”

Aradia tries to say, _uh, we have a GPS, Rose, I'm holding it, it's fine-_

“Atlas possession is a right entitled to the person most experienced with travelling! That’s me.”

“That argument in no way is sound in a court of-did _you just make that up_?”

Aradia leans on the window, closes her eyes and listens to the both of them bicker. Summer before she got in the car; surrounded by kittens and parrots.

Now, two best friends arguing as the temperature rises; rolls over numbers in its ascending mercury. She can feel a thermometer popping, even. She opens the window and slips a hand out, palming the wind. The [heat](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsGpuyxog7E) is nearly unbearable. It's going to be a rocket summer.

Here; now: Road trip. The _worst_ road trip.

\--

At high noon they hit a gas station. It’s a blur of Jade running in and buying fruit chews and pringles and chocolate milk and Aradia regretting letting her dictate the food supply. She buys gum, cigarettes, bottled water, mints and more Snickers than necessary. Rose pitches in a request for whisky, which is denied. Rose bemoans the lack of alcohol, their phones buzzing non-stop and a severe lack of [good music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsHldYnG8EI) on air. She’s wearing a tank top and Levi’s, trying to make the AC stop flaring up repeatedly.

Jade and Aradia argue over who gets to use the car charger first. Rose is silent. She looked at her phone while they were inside. Mom’s there, so’s Bro, Dave, John and Kanaya. She shoots off a “I’m safe, with friends. Don’t worry about me. Will call soon” and shuts it off at 80%. Half-truths, her favorite form of lie.

Jade wins and plugs it in first on account that she’s got the lowest percentage. Aradia rolls her eyes and beans her with a crunched up gum wrapper she’s found on the floor. Jade tugs on Aradia's ripped-sleeveless band shirt and undoes some of its stray threads. They’re both wearing shorts, and Rose takes a minute to admire their legs-and Jade’s guns in her green tank top.

Rose tries to smooth away her smile. Aradia grins at her sideways and Jade’s green eyes catch hers for a second in the rearview mirror.

The windows are wide open and she’s cruising down the I-90.

_This is blatant escapism, not to mention adolescent immaturity-what do you hope to gain from this endeavor? This is stupid and dumb, turn back now, Rose Rose Rose-_

She turns the radio up to eleven.

\--

Eventually they stop. Everyone’s road-drunk and irritable so when Rose finally pulls over Aradia gives a very quiet exhalation and Jade jumps out the car. The stuffy heat rolls away and she’s hit by a gust of chilly wind; she spreads her arms out like a bird.

Fresh air has never felt so good. She feels a little ill from all the chips she’s been guzzling, combined with chocolate milk, but fuck _that_ noise. She does a little cartwheel on the pavement, stunning some pigeons. Aradia mumbles something under her breath she can’t hear, and Rose gives her a lopsided smile.

They wander off in different directions, promising to meet back up at the car in twenty.

They’re at a rest stop somewhere in Montana. It’s almost twilight. It’s nearly empty-there’s a group of guys and a family eating at the fast food restaurants. A couple truckers pumping gas. Near the restrooms, Jade’s pounding at a vending machine for some peanuts and _I put in a dollar so help me God, give me my shit_

Rose exits the bathroom and lays a hand on the vending machine. A chocolate bar falls down, and so does a bag of Twisties.

“How’d you do that?”

“Magic.”

Jade scoffs, but hugs her anyway.

Rose buys some bunches of grapes off a street vendor. Aradia buys Large McDonald’s fries and they alternate between the two when they pack back into the car; sweet and salty.

\--

“Why did you ask me along, actually?” Aradia asks Rose. It’s 7 pm.

“I know it wasn’t just because I’m supposed to be Sollux’ proxy.”

“She sacrificed a lot of things for you,” Rose says, looking straight forward.

Aradia leans over and fiddles with the knobs of the radio, stone-faced. All that the stereo chokes out is static.

\--

They pull in at a beat-up motel around 9 pm. The three of them settle in a single, twin beds with a foldout. Aradia takes the foldout, says starkly, “I’m used to it.”

They watch the only thing playing that night on the free channel:  _Psycho._

“Hitchcock was ahead of his time,” Rose murmurs.

“Yeah. This is one of my favorite movies,” Aradia says at the start, Rose turning to look at her with a surprised smile.

By the time the credits roll, Jade’s sound asleep.

Aradia clicks off the light.

There’s the [sound](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRERWvDLHTc) of cars, and people murmuring outside, and she can see the cherries of cigarette lights moving around outside the window. The noise of doors slamming, windows closing, the buzzing of the motel sign.

Rose tries to sleep. She counts the number of cracks on the ceiling. Gazes at the bare naked bulb in the dark with its beaded chain. The bed is lumpy, but soft enough. She thinks the carpet was beige once when she pads her feet out into the cold night air.

It’s Aradia that finds her out there, goose-bumps and all.

“You’re taking goth to the extremes, don’t you think?”

“Excuse me?”

“The black lipstick, the soulful eyes, the brooding at midnight. You’re giving me a run for my depressing money, Ms. Lalonde.”

“Now, whatever could that mean, I wonder.”

“I mean,” she sighs, “My Goth Queen title is in danger, and I’m afraid that now I have to kill you.”

“Never presume I do not have…vampires at my disposal.”

“Kanaya would never hurt me.”

“For me she might.”

Aradia laughs, throaty and deep. “You do have plenty of girls wrapped around your finger at school, I have to say.”

Rose raises an eyebrow. “Have you been keeping an eye on me?”

Aradia shrugs. “Maybe.”

Rose blames it on being exhausted later.

Aradia and Rose have only talked once, drunk at a party somewhere. Brief, but interesting.

They’d bumped into each other here and there since then, but nothing ever came of it. Kanaya, Vriska. Always there, always wanting.

Yet, she’s here. On the tail of another girl she’s loved and lost, laughing with this girl she barely knows. She reaches up and fists her shirt up in her hands and drags her height down and kisses her on the rust lips.

\--

They both pretend like nothing’s happened the next morning. They made out for what seemed like ages in the burning cold, then went back inside and fell asleep in separate beds.

Numb with sleep, the morning light cuts through the blinds like a cruelty.

Jade wakes up first. Stumbling against the sink and rummaging through her pack for her toiletries. She drowns herself in the shower until Rose knocks on the door. Politely, still in her too-big shirt and boxers.

Jade, freshly washed but still groggy, pads out in khakis, a white shirt proclaiming SCIENCE! and motel-provided bunny slippers. Her converse sneakers are triangulated by the doorway, haphazard. Rose’s ballet flats are arranged neatly next to them. Aradia’s combat boots are residing in the corner.

Aradia’s claimed Rose’s bed in her absence, in a black nightgown. Her grey skin looking oddly chalky in the dimly lit room.

Rose takes twenty minutes and emerges looking refreshed, her hair no longer mussed, her lips perfect. Small and lethal in a black dress. Aradia goes inside and takes five, coming out yawning with no makeup on with an oxblood button-down and black jeans. They put their shoes on.

“And so the saga continues,” Rose says as they file out.

“Can the saga include breakfast?” Jade asks.

“Can we do the human movie cliché of going to a diner?” Aradia asks, intrigued.

Jade and Rose respectively say “ _Heck_ yes” and “No” at the same time.

\--

Jade tells the waitress that she’ll “take all the waffles you have” and Rose kicks her in the shin while saying, “A dozen waffles for my friend here, thanks” and stops Jade from trying to slip her a fifty.

The table is silent for a while.

It’s Rose who asks, with some sort of numb wonder, “What the fuck are we doing?”

“Hmm?” Aradia hums, devouring pancakes. She’s drizzled syrup all over them and doused them in sugared butter. Karkat’s rubbed off on her.

“We’re chasing somebody across states when there’s…why did I drag you two along on this joyride?”

“Uh, ‘cuz we wanted to?” Jade says. _Obviously, duh._

“No, it’s because I coerced you into that automobile because of your emotional attachments. We might not even find her in the city. If we don’t, where would we go? Would we chase after her across country borders? Sollux can’t evade legal redress forever.”

Aradia and Jade exchange wary looks. She has a point.

“I’ll pay for whatever car you guys want to rent to come back home. This is my journey. You don’t have to waste your summer on it.”

“Stop.” Aradia says, fork in the air dripping syrup from the tongs. “This is our pilgrim’s journey, together, Rose.”

“Aradia-”

“I’m with you till the end.”

Aradia stares at her while munching on a pancake before Rose sighs and relents.

There’s a bit of silence before Jade clears her throat.

“You two push and pull. You fight. You go after what you want. I don’t.”

The words are hard to scrape out of her throat, but they’re there. Rose is the first to rise up from her booth and get up to touch her but Jade stops her in her tracks with a raised hand.

“But this? This is different. I may not have as much history with Terezi as you guys, but she matters to me. She always will. So don’t tell me to turn back now. Don’t you _dare_.”

Rose closes her eyes. Jade and Terezi; orphans that practically raised themselves, sharp and incisive and unpredictable. She remembers they dated one summer and Dave nearly threw a fit. They’d been terrifying, and not in an adorable way either; they were not people to play PDA chicken with or fuck with, for that matter.

At this table Jade’s the only one who can even come close to understanding her.

“Besides, you doofuses wouldn’t get anywhere without me!”

Aradia reaches across the table and forks a pancake on her plate.

Jade beams at her, knowing enough that _sorry_ can come dribbled in syrup.

\--

The long hours on the road stretch on. Aradia and Jade fight about who gets to pick the [music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-ENipUB8NI) until Rose says, “So help me God, I will turn this car right back around,” in the sternest voice until everyone in the car laughs. 

After they’re done laughing, breathless, Rose hums the tune and Jade snickers in the back.

After an hour or so, Jade and Rose swap driving duties.

They play word games.

“Um, iceberg lettuce.” Aradia offers.

“Enchiladas.” Rose shoots.

“Spaghetti.” Jade says.

“Ingrown toenails.”

“That’s not a food.” Rose says, smirking.

“Trolls eat them.”

“You _liar.”_   Jade accuses from the backseat.

“ _Xenophobe._ ”

“Now, now, children, let’s not fight,” Rose says cloyingly, until Aradia smacks her in the shoulder.

“I protest to this couple cuteness,” Jade says.

Rose and Aradia freeze.

It’s Aradia who goes, “How did you-”

“Who’s in MENSA?”

Rose rolls her eyes. “You are.”

“I’m a genius.” She says, nonchalant. “Pretty easy to figure.”

“Your modesty is attractive,” Aradia deadpans.

“Oh, good, then it won’t be awkward when I proposition you both.”

Rose stops the car at the next gas station and has to spend five whole minutes doubled over laughing. Aradia kisses Jade and when Rose has stopped laughing she does too.

“Best road trip ever,” Aradia announces.

“I think this is the craziest week I have ever had,” Rose tells the gas pump.

“It’s only Tuesday,” a staring gas station attendant replies. Jade gives him a thumbs up.

\--

Jade [finds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSWr_bTrGvc) a 6-pack of super miracle bubbles abandoned in the toilet. Aradia’s shift is on so she has to deal with Jade riding shotgun while Rose reclines in the backseat. This, inevitably, involves Jade sticking her head out the car. The wand's soaked with bubble solution, trailing bubbles behind them. There's iridescent spheres blowing away in the breeze.

Rose opens the window as well, and gets some of it in her mouth and hair.

“Pbthfhhhfhfh,” she says, eloquently. “Bluh!!!!!!!!!”

Jade’s deep bubbling laughter has Rose grinning all the way to 4pm, despite the nasty taste in her mouth.

It’s a sunny day in Wisconsin, beautiful and bright, and Aradia watches Jade’s hair stream behind her, blowing bubbles, getting her hands all soapy-syrupy.

At some point the cinematic image is ruined by Jade trying not to crinkle the Fritos bag  too loudly because Rose fell asleep, but the sentiment’s still totally there.

They find another motel to hole up in for the night, and this time they stop around 7 pm because Sollux texts that they need to get to a place with wi-fi.

They go to a nicer one this time, one with proper lighting. Aradia and Jade’s hair are hot messes of clumpy blackness. There’s a queen bed and a single, and Jade immediately claims the entire queen bed before Aradia jumps on her.

Muffled by the sheets, Jade says, “Ugh, your cleavage is way too heavy.”

“I choose to take that as a compliment.”

Rose sighs a tad dramatically. “I suppose my chastity will be preserved tonight.”

Jade waggles her eyebrows. “It’s okay, I find somnambulism attractive. If you fall into bed by accident-”

Her sentence is stopped by a pillow smacking her in the face.

Aradia’s phone buzzes at that minute, a compact reliable Android. Coordinates scrolling down her screen.

\--

Aradia’s gone out to buy more snacks before heading down to the address Sollux gave them. Jade has packed what seems to be an endless supply of shorts. She’s lounging in practical blue ones now, with her classic long-black-sleeved white atom shirt. She’s on the bed in a spread eagle position, watching Rose get ready in the bathroom from the corner of her eye.

She’s got a black lace dress on. It’s two layers-one long-sleeved layer of black lace, and one regular black fabric, that’s just a bustier with a full skirt. She looks like a blood princess, with her red lipstick and black eyeliner.

“Hey, Jade?”

“Yeah?”

“How long have you been harboring thoughts of us having a threesome?”

Jade nearly rolls off the bed at that, but instead she starts laughing.

“Um, since we spent the last 24 hours crammed in one space?”

“Jade.”

“Rose.”

“Jade.”

“Rooose.”

“Jade.”

“Dr. Scott!”

“Okay, okay,” Rose says after fighting off a case of the giggles. “As much as I enjoy The Rocky Horror charade, Jade, I guess I’m just concerned. We’ve been best friends for years. What if this sexual dalliance-” “- _dalliance_ -” “-shut up, threatens to corrupt the platonic equilibrium we’ve maintained for so long?”

“Rose,” Jade says, her expression for once serious. “You know me. I’m not going to get overly attached, creepy or jealous! Whenever you want out, say so, and I won’t be weird about it. I don’t think Ray will, either.”

“Who said I wanted out?” Rose says, approaching the bed.

“We’re best friends, Rose. You can’t get rid of me no matter how incestuously tangled our fearsome four gets. And maybe it’ll be weird. But we’ve survived worse.”

“Such an optimist,” she teases, and Jade sits up and presses her bare lips to that blood red lipstick.

“Let’s see if that makeup’s smoochproof,” Jade says into her mouth and Rose puts her hands on her waist.

By the time Aradia gets back, Rose looks impeccable. She has a wicked glint in her eye, though, and Jade smiles lazily at her. She rolls her eyes. “You started the party without me,” she accuses.

\--

They’re partying at the end of the world.

“Or so my dour lover would like to believe,” Rose says slackly to the passed out guy on the couch. They’re having an intriguing conversation about the philosophy of narcotics, hang-over cures, Grimoire tips and how-tos, the concept of a neoapocalyptic narrative doused in the reoccurring theme of youthful immortality. The usual. She’s monopolizing the only non-verbal life form in the room as instructed by Aradia. Aradia and Jade are asking around about Terezi.

Sollux led them to this address, saying he got a ping from Terezi’s old phone. Maybe someone who’d seen her. It was on their way, he said. But be careful, okay, Ray?

They’d pulled up while Aradia was trying to formulate a plan on how to sneak through the back door. Rose wanted to find a silly disguise. Jade just knocked on the front door.

They’d been welcomed in, handed a Red Cup full of some toxic cocktail. The music was [loud](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5a1mY1JpOc), but not too loud, and the house was crowded. It looked like a college party, by the age bracket.

Jade takes a shot at some point. Maybe a couple. _Look_ , Jade can totally handle it.

She’s in the middle of trying to find another shot when she stumbles into what she thinks is a coatroom until it reveals itself to be a bedroom. With one person by the window, face lit by a match.

At a party at the end of the world (namely, Minnesota) they find a Scourge Sister.

Aradia saunters in saying, “Any luck-” and stopping dead in her tracks.

“Serket.”

Vriska grins, her limbs like candle wicks attached to her body. Her fingers are thin, and she pours the last bit of gasoline from the petrol can she has in hand.

“Megido.”

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“Uh, what does it look like I’m doing????????”

“It looks like you’re setting this entire house on fire,” Jade cuts in neatly, calmly. Aradia’s already strode up to jam her horns in Vriska’s face, almost, and Jade’s like stone. She pulls at her shoulder with a strength that surprises both Vriska and Aradia. She steps up.

“Aw, is shorty mcguns trying to be cute.”

“Uh huh. Forget platitudes. Strength comes from a lower center of gravity, and aren’t you-” she looks her up and down- “-a little _short_ on that, right about now? I’ve got a pissed-off whisperer, a tipsy Grimoire expert downstairs and I’m a better shot than everybody in this house _and_ the cops that are on their way here, right now. You’ve subsisted on alcoholic fluids and junk food for the last couple of hours. I can smell it on your breath. So clear the _fuck_ out, before we fuck _your_ shit up.”

She says all this with a cheerful smile. It’s adorable.

Vriska’s visibly shaken, but still not buying.

“You’re bluffing. I don’t see a piece on-”

Jade draws, cocks and thumbs the safety off before Vriska can finish her sentence and there’s a barrel she’s looking down now, right between the eyes.

“Well, would you look at that!” She says, pink mouth open in surprise. Her face a perfect mask of shock. “I must be a witch, _huh?_ ”

Vriska holds her hands up, mockingly.

“A few questions,” Jade says. “Aradia?”

“Pleasure. Where’s Terezi?”

“Fuck if I know. We haven’t talked since I left, and that’s the truth. Screwed, either.”

Aradia rolls her eyes. “Why’d you leave?”

“Why’d you think? Nobody wants me there.”

“Why are you exhuming this house?”

Vriska shrugs. “’Cause _fire?_ C’mon, Charge, you like the excitement as much as I do.”

“You never do anything without a Goddamn motive, Serket, what’s going on?”

She shrugs again. Aradia tightens her fists. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

Vriska throws up a flashbang. Jade’s quicker than she is, on a sober day, and Vriska has enough luck that she’s grasping at thin air.

It’s heat and light, a scream and a wicked laugh and when the dust settles she’s gone.

There’s flame licking the nightstand already, and a match that seems to gleam at them before burning up.

“Oh, fuck,” Aradia breathes, and Jade’s gripping her arm dragging her out and shouting throughout the house, “FIRE! Everybody out!”

Rose looks up calmly and hefts her drunken companion over her shoulder with the ease of a construction worker. Everyone disperses and there’s the sound of screaming and wood catching alight.

Rose dumps him on the sidewalk and has already started the car by the time Jade and Aradia slam into their seats, their faces layered slightly in soot. Breathless and adrenaline-fueled.

There’s police sirens in the distance as they stop by a gas station, quickly wipe off the soot, and check the fuck out of their motel. Wherever they’re staying, it’s not going to be here.

That night nobody talks, and the streetlamps hit their face like an accusation.

\--

She slowly extracts herself from Rose’s body, regretfully, carefully.

Aradia emerges from the backseat of the car twirling a cigarette between her fingers. She read once about smoking to die. The idea appeals to her in an abstract way, like the croaking of frogs around dawn-and it's nearly dawn now. The entire night is half-alive still, caught between midnight blue and the paling of the horizon. Light seeping through the trees. They're dead in the middle of [nowhere](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KHJKj9GgsI), still with gas but camped out in a field off the highway. They could die right now. They could live here forever and a day.

She thinks this as she lights her cigarette with the lighter sollux gave her. It's yellow, and the flame's blue sometimes, red the others. She likes it.

Jade emerges from the front seat right as the orange sun begins to hit the horizon's edge. Aradia's cigarette is almost down to a stub. She plucks it from between her lips unceremoniously and gives her a stick of gum. Aradia expects her voice to be too loud in the early morning gloom, the reverence of pre-sunrise kissing too sanctified for jade, who's always anything but appropriate. She chews on the gum slowly, waiting for her voice to fill out the sky with it's loudness.

Instead Jade kisses her, gently, once on the lips. She's so tender Aradia raises her eyebrows. Jade's made it clear: no one ever taught her how to be soft. But her eyes are clear with something that makes Aradia believe.

"Your hands are cold, dummy," she murmurs, her voice deep. "Come back inside when the sun stops bothering you."

"Narcoleptic," Aradia retorts fondly. There's something about this she wants to remember. Whispering in the dark in the midst of nowhere.

Jade gives her a once over. “You okay?”

“I’m okay.”

“After this we’ll take her down,” she says, meaning Serket.

“It’s okay. Not worth the effort. I’m just not tired.”

“Alright.”

“Why do you think she left?” And Jade knows she’s not thinking about Vriska.

“Maybe she made too many mistakes. Maybe she thought she could start over somewhere new.”

“It’s always easier to leave, isn’t it?”

“Sometimes.”

Aradia sighs. They keep quiet for a while until she says, "Back to bed, Harley."

Jade pecks her on the cheek one more time and crawls back inside the steel cocoon of the beat up car.

\--

They make it to New York and Aradia calls Sollux, asks for the specific address. He gives it to her, somewhere near Broadway but verging into bad-part-of-town territory.

They strap in for what feels like the last time, and Rose chuckles softly.

“I can’t believe she made us come all this way from Hicktown, Washington State.” is the sentiment generally floating around, inside the car.

“She’s always been such a dumpass,” Rose says, facing forward. Jade’s sitting up at shotgun, Aradia at the back. “Karkat, Vriska, Gamzee.”

“She’s brilliant,” Jade adds.

“Romance-not her forte, though.” Aradia says, dryly.

“After all, she’s dated everyone in this car.”

They all share a private laugh. 

They pull up.

“Ready to face her?”

“Do we have a game plan?” Asks Rose.

Aradia shrugs. “You hold, I’ll knock her out.”

Jade tsks. “Such violence, my children.”

It’s a warehouse, and for some reason Aradia has a bad feeling.

It’s abandoned, full of cogs and barrels and cobwebs.

Aradia says, as she walks around a bunch of crates, “Guys? I think I found something.”

It’s a phone. The battery’s dead, but on the screen is a post-it. “D34D 3ND, S3RK3T.”

“She’s not here.” Jade says. Disbelief.

“No-”

“She’s gone.” Rose says, soft.

The ceiling fans whir.

“It’s over.” Rose whispers.

\--

It’s Jade who drives them to some coffee place. Aradia and Rose haven’t said a word, so she orders them a skinny latte and a macchiato with hazelnut sauce, while she gets chocolate cake.

“So what now?” Aradia asks, dire. Looking at Rose.

“What now? We go home. Give up the ghost.”

“Bull _shit._ So we didn’t find her this week. So what? We’ve got three whole months of summer left, a car and the United States of America.”

“Jade, what are you saying?”

“Run away with me.”

Aradia and Rose exchange looks. Rose almost shakes her head- _this is impossible, this is crazy, this is nuts_ -but Aradia’s eyes have a light in them, a single question dawning.

_[Why not?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MCml-nayIE) _

“C’mon, Rose. What’s left to lose?” Aradia says, her palms facing outward.

They followed her all the way here. And now- she would follow them anywhere.

Leaving's always been easier.

“We need to stop at a Laundromat,” she finally says, sighing. Jade and Aradia high five.

There's something unspoken between them, but everyone's thinking the same thing:  _maybe finding a lost girl has only one solution._

“Can we go to that Asian supermarket and buy Pocky before laundry?"

“Yeah, and Hello Panda and jelly cubes,” Jade chips in.

“Okay.”

“And can we go to that sex toy store?” Jade asks, fascinated. They’d driven past one on the way here.

“ _No._ ”

“Come on, we’re in New York!” Jade insists. Aradia’s shaking with laughter.

“I will leave you here, _by the curb_ , both of you, and start a new life in Canada with a new name.”

“We’ll make passports. Handlebar moustaches and I’ll cut off all my hair,” Jade decides.

“I want a restraining order.”

Aradia’s the peacemaker. She hustles them into the car after paying, securing her place in the driver’s seat. “Alright, bitches,” she says cheerfully, “Where to next?”

Then it’s just them, three girls, and a car, roaring off in the New York streets headed for everywhere.

\--

GC: H3LLO L4D13S

GC: 1 H4V3 1NFORM4T1ON TH4T THR33 OV3RLY P3RS1ST3NT 3X3S H4V3 B33N LOOK1NG FOR M3?

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is my tribute to my favorite road trip narratives: Zombieland, I


End file.
